Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Individual

The study of systems that are strongly interacting plays an important role in the development of our understanding of the physical world. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory that governs the interactions of subatomic particles on a nuclear level, is strongly interacting. It has been known for years that this property of QCD is responsible for many of the unusual and interesting features of nuclear matter. However, the standard calculational techniques that have been developed by generations of physicists, largely in the context of quantum electro-dynamics (QED), are not applicable to strongly coupled systems. For this reason, the behavior of these systems is much less well understood. Over the past 25 years, expensive experimental programs involving particle accelerators have been developed, for example at Brookhaven National Laboratory and CERN, to study strongly coupled systems empirically. Quark gluon plasmas are produced in relativistic nuclear collisions, and many exciting experimental results have become available. The interpretation of these results is made difficult by the fact that the systems that are created are out of equilibrium for an unknown period of time at the beginning of their evolution. It is important for the progress of science that the directions of theoretical and experimental research programs are coordinated. Accordingly, there has been much recent work on the development of theoretical techniques to calculate observables in strongly coupled and non-equilibrated systems. This work is both challenging and exciting. It involves the invention of completely new mathematical methods to describe physical situations that were once considered beyond our ability to describe mathematically. One goal of my research program is the development of non-perturbative methods to study strongly coupled quantum field theories. Another major goal is the development of techniques to study the evolution of out-of-equilibrium plasma systems.